It was in April that Archie Blair conceived the happy idea of purchasing an automobile, thus combining business with pleasure most practically; a modest secondhand affair of three good cylinders and one that missed, but it shone (Archibald being in the paint and varnish business) with a glossiness that advertised its owner afar off. And like the bicycle in the song, it was "built for two."
Archibald had no wish to intrude; still, an automobile is an automobile, and it seemed to him that on a fine Spring evening almost any young lady might like to ride in one, even if accustomed to limousines.
Joan first became aware of this acquisition one fine day when it appeared and reappeared and once again appeared passing the window where she sat reading. Three times, like Hector about the walls of Troy, it circled the block, smelling of its new paint and complaining loudly of its missing cylinder; and at last Joan, puzzled by this persistence, thought to glance at its driver. Clutching the wheel in a death grapple, taking his eye from the traffic only long enough for a hopeful glance at the house front as he passed, she recognized her friend in all the proud modesty of ownership.
Joan promptly put on a small hat and a large veil, and went out to take a walk.
"Miss Darcy! Say, Miss Darcy!" (Honk-honk—or rather Ooo-ooga-ooga!) "Look who's here! Mine! Bought it myself!—I was just hoping I'd run across you somewhere."
"I trust you won't," murmured the lady.
"Ha! Ha! Ha!" roared Archie, recognizing a jest. "Look out, or maybe I will yet! Perhaps the safest place is inside," he suggested craftily, and with some truth. Joan accepted the hint.
"Learnt in three lessons!" proclaimed Archie, unable to resist the temptation to brag a little. (An automobile of his own, all paid for, and the One and Only beside him on its seat—who can blame the man?) "Only got it last week, and if there's a part of little old Lizzie I don't know about, it's because it isn't there, that's all! Of course I can't take my eye off the road yet—" (this as a family party narrowly escaped annihilation)—"but you won't mind my talking sort of over my shoulder?"
"I won't mind your talking any way at all—so long as it's not about armadillos."
Archie grinned. "Now you're joshing me!"
"I never was more serious in my life. What's the subject this week?"
But he declined to be drawn. "All that's just for social gatherings. People don't have really to converse out-of-doors, do they?—Say, what if we go out in the real country somewhere!—not parks, where there's always so many things around, but a good straight empty road, where I can step on her tail and let her rip—eh?"
The idea seemed good to Joan. It was the sort of day when cities are an abomination, and the soul of the veriest urbanite yearns to follow a gipsy pateran.
Once out of the complications of traffic, Archibald lost his caution, and stepped on her tail and let her rip. The song of the birds, the neigh of startled colts in the fields as they passed, the rush of the golden air itself, all were lost in the roar of the willing little engine.
"Thirty-five, thirty-eight, forty-two—" chanted Archie with a proud eye on the speedometer. "Go to it, Lizzie! Good old girl!"
Joan had no fear. Somehow the car seemed safe in his big, powerful hands—as safe as she was herself. Off came her hat, and the wind did its pleasure with her hair. Rushing along so close to the ground, dust in their faces, trees and meadows passing in long green streaks, she got quite a different sense of motion from any she had known before. It was a more personal thing, more of an individual effort, as if she and her companion were really flying like birds, with the little car for wings.
"Oh, don't stop! It's glorious!" she cried as he suddenly slowed down.
He explained, quietly, that her hair was blowing in his eyes.
"What a nuisance!" She tucked the offending strand into place.
"I—didn't mind," said Archibald, in a rather queer voice.
Joan, with a glance at his face, decided that they would have to be turning back. But as she bade him good-by she said suddenly, "Teach me how to run Lizzie myself some day, will you, Archie?"
"You mean you'll go out with me again?" he demanded, radiant.
"Of course," promised Joan, reckless with speed and the Spring air. "Whenever you like!"
Archibald tooled his Lizzie back to her shed with the air of Phœbus driving the chariot of the sun. He warbled aloud, he wore his hat on one ear, he presented a small darky, who helped him to groom and tend Lizzie, with a silver dollar.
But that night as he lay in bed, with an April rain making music on the roof above him, he told himself soberly that he must be careful. There had been moments to-day, especially with her hair blowing across his face, when a fellow almost forgot!... He conjured himself by all his gods to be a wise little ostrich and keep his head well tucked into the sand.
And Joan, listening to the same soft rain, so full of suggestion and race memories and the call of the year, also reminded herself that she would have to be careful. She thought of his humble, adoring, happy eyes, and her heart smote her. This one was not quite as other men. To hurt an Archibald was a trifle beneath one's dignity.
The career of Lizzie (whose surname may perhaps be guessed by the intelligent reader) was short, and her end untimely; but even so she served her part in the inscrutable purposes of Fate.
It came about in this wise.
Archibald had formed quite a habit of calling for his lady, not only on fine afternoons after five, but sometimes in the balmy spring nights after dinner, when all the world meandered two by two, occupying the benches in the little park opposite Joan's house, and filling the roads with a streaming procession of motors and traps and buggies, of anything that went on wheels; even perambulators.
Joan rather enjoyed being part and parcel of this murmuring, meandering community. She liked to feel in touch with the people about her, like any Miss Gracie or Miss Ella with a beau—particularly when it cost no effort. She had but to lend her company, and Archibald would do the rest. He asked no more from her than her presence.
Each time he came for her, Lizzie had acquired some new elegance; dust-covers, a side-mirror, a voice that sounded like a Packard's, at least. Not a car on the road exhibited brighter brasswork than hers. If the chariot was not altogether worthy of the lady, it was through no fault of Archie's. Lizzie, like her owner, strove to please.
Sometimes, if they started in the afternoon, Effie May would insist upon providing one of the little picnic lunches that were her specialty.—"So's you won't have to come home till you get good and ready," she explained, twinkling at Archie. It was perhaps a little ungrateful of him not to meet her overtures half way, since it was evident that she suspected his secret and was deliberately aiding and abetting him.
But Archie cared nothing for her aidings and abettings. Hope did not enter into his calculations at all. He entertained no false illusions. All he asked was to be allowed as much as possible of Joan's company, for as long as she was willing to grant it.
His present streak of luck could not last, he knew. Some fellow would come along soon with a larger, finer car, or perhaps with a saddle-horse, or a coach and four—at any rate with something more suitable than he, Archie, had to offer. But meanwhile there was now; and if she was never allowed to suspect the inner state of his feelings, the glorious now might be prolonged indefinitely. Archibald was nothing if not an opportunist.
So he was very careful. And Joan was very careful. No more hair blew into eyes. They remained matter-of-fact and chummy and impersonal, even when they picknicked together under a twilight sky, one on either side of a spread napkin, as if they had set up housekeeping together in the wilderness—a situation which, as people know who are far less wise than Effie May, is usually provocative of results. Nothing occurred, however: until the day that marked the passing of Lizzie.
They were on their way home in the gray of a late evening, Archibald driving, with half an eye on the whiteness of certain hands as they deftly stowed away the remains of tea in the picnic-box. Which may have been the reason that when he came to a railroad crossing, he was less careful than usual.
It was a switching track on which a freight train stood, heavily panting. Lizzie safely negotiated this, and was going on to a second track beyond, when something jerked Archie's eyes around in time to gaze full into the headlight of an approaching passenger train. He had not enough speed on to cross the track ahead of it. He had too much to stop where he was.
"Gee!" he grunted; and with a powerful wrench of the wheel, turned into the track just ahead of the rushing engine.
Joan meant to scream, but forgot in sheer excitement. Behind sounded a frantic grinding of brakes, a hiss of steam, and the locomotive let out shriek after shriek.
"Oh, I hear you!" muttered Archie. "I'll get out of your way the minute I can, old top! None too soon to suit yours truly."
He stared into his side-mirror. Down the ties pounded willing Lizzie at thirty, forty, fifty—with a pop a tire blew out.
"Get that door open," he shouted at Joan, above the hissing steam. "Don't jump till I say the word. Trying to make a flat place. You hear?"
Joan nodded. There were deep gullies on either side. She glanced over her shoulder. The engine seemed almost on top of them—But Archie kept his eye on his mirror.
"Can't make it," he said suddenly. "All ready? Now! Jump!"
To the after mortification of her entire life, Joan could not move. She understood the necessity, her head was quite clear and calm, but her limbs refused her bidding.
The next instant he had seized her, tossed her out like a bundle, she was falling—falling....
There came a crash, the splintering of glass and iron.
Long after she was able to, Joan dared not open her eyes. She fought back the coming of consciousness, tried not to think.
She was on a moving something—a wagon perhaps, or a train. There was murmuring of voices near her. She strained her ears. The voices were strange.
She wanted to pray, but could not remember God's name.
She was lying on some sort of lounge—a leather lounge. She lifted her lids very, very slowly. She was in the smoking-compartment of a train—alone! Where was he? She tried wildly to sit up—to call out—
And then something moved beside her on the edge of the couch. It was a head, a bowed, curly head which she recognized and which belonged to a figure that knelt beside her in an attitude of utter despair.
"Oh, Archie, Archie!" she whimpered. "Then youaren'tkilled!"
The head jerked up. The next instant she was in his arms, her face against his. She was being kissed and kissed again—eyes, lips, cheeks, hair—whatever he could reach. She could not stop him. She did not try to stop him. Indeed there was something consoling, comforting in those frantic kisses, all wet with tears, and fiercely tender with the passion of one who has brought his treasure single-handed out of the jaws of death.
"My God! My God! My God!" said Archibald; and nothing else.
Two days later he came to see her, with a good deal of court-plaster about his face, and limping on a sprained ankle; and found Joan in bed with a wrenched shoulder, otherwise unhurt. Effie May convoyed him amiably upstairs and left him there, to his intense perturbation. He stood sheepishly beside the door, hardly daring to look at the pale, laughing face among the pillows—that face with which he had taken such amazing liberties.
Joan in apeignoir, with her hair in a great braid on either shoulder, looked more like the little girl he had first seen weeping alone on the train, than the composed young lady of ballrooms and horse shows. Yet his awe of her was not lessened. On the contrary. Once before, when she lay thus helpless before him, he had forgotten himself. Suppose his emotions were to form the habit of running away with him? He clenched his hands hard.
This timidity on his part did much to restore her own shattered composure. She had been rather dreading this interview to which she had steeled herself. Better to get it over and done with, however, since the thing was inevitable. She could not quite ignore what had passed.
"You might come closer," she suggested. "I really don't feel strong enough to-day to converse with you through a megaphone."
He seated himself gingerly on the edge of the chair she indicated, looking everywhere but at Joan.
"Oh, Archie!" she cried, suddenly tremulous, "wasn't itterrible?"
He started. "Terrible" was not the word in his mind. "Outrageous," perhaps—but by no means terrible! "W-what?" he said.
"Why, the accident! Poor, poor Lizzie! Was there anything left of her at all?"
He found his voice. "Oh, Lizzie? Well, not much except her license tag."
"Her poor precious little license tag!... Well, that will be useful anyway, for the new machine."
He shook his head. "I guess there isn't going to be any new machine."
"Oh!" she flushed with quick sympathy. "You mean you—you can't afford another?"
"Why, I guess the railroad company'd help to buy me another if I wanted it—the engineer didn't signal for that crossing. But—I don't. You see," he murmured, looking down, "there were—well, there were sort of associations with Lizzie."
Joan understood. Her flush deepened. "I suppose you feel about her as I do about Peggy," she said quickly. "My first horse! If anything were to happen to her, I'd never feel the same about another.—I'm sorry, Archie! We've had great fun out of the little car."
He shook his big shoulders as if trying to rid them of some burden. "Oh, what does the machine matter?" he said roughly. "What gets my goat is what you must be thinking of me, what your father must be thinking! Of all the dod-blasted he-idiots! Not to be able to take better care of a woman than that!"
"I think, and so does my father, that you took wonderfully good care of me! If it hadn't been for your nerve, your quickness.... Ugh!" she shuddered. "Dad says that not one man out of a thousand would have seen what to do in time to do it. In fact, he's waiting in the library to make you a speech before you go. Eloquence-with-gestures. Do you know, I never realized before that in some ways man is really woman's superior? You've got yourselves better in hand, your muscles do what you tell them to. It was a good lesson for me." She smiled up at him. His miserable eyes touched her, and she held out her hand. "Why, Archie! what makes you look so ashamed?"
He ignored that friendly hand. "I'm thinking that if your father knewallI'd done," he muttered, "he'd do something more to me than make a speech. Eloquence-with-gestures, all right! Gestures of the foot."
Joan decided to take the bull by the horns. "You mean when I came to, and you—kissed me? Why did you do that?" she asked, gravely. ("There! Now the tooth is out," she thought.)
"Because I was a damn fool," he groaned.
Joan's lips twitched despite herself. "Really, you're not very complimentary!"
But Archibald was beyond considerations of mere politeness. "Because I hadn't the decent horse-gumption to keep my feelings to myself! Had to go spilling 'em all over the place, insulting you with 'em!"
There was a pause. "You care for me, then?" prompted Joan.
Archie grinned, miserably. "Well, what do you think?"
"I'm afraid you do."
"You're dead right," he said.
Another silence followed this admission, and then he rose to go. "I guess that'll be about all from me!—Only I want you to know, Miss Darcy, I—I never meant to do such a thing—I never knew I had it in me! Good Lord! When I saw you all crumpled up there in that gully, not moving at all, even when the train-gang came to pick you up—When I knew that I had done it, I—! And then you opened your eyes and looked at me.... Oh, hell, what's the use?"
He turned blindly toward the door.
She had to catch at his coat-tails to stop him. "Archie! Wait a minute.—I'm going to make you a speech myself. In the first place, Archibald Blair, your sort of 'feelings' wouldn't insult anybody. They couldn't! I'm proud to have you care for me, and I'd be glad, too, if only I could—But it's not as if you were asking anything in return, is it?"
"Me?—asking? Good Lord, I'm not such a mutt as that!"
"Some day you will be 'asking,' Archie dear—a worthier girl than I am, I know—and she won't think you a mutt at all!"
He shook his head. "No, Miss Darcy. You've sort of spoiled ordinary girls for me."
She cried honestly, "I hope not! Oh, I do hope not! Because I was going to beg you to stay friends with me—I need friends. And Ican'tkeep you if you're going to go on feeling that way!"
"Sure you can," said Archie, his eyes lighting. "Just try me and see! I'll make one of the best little old pals you ever saw, if you'll just forgive the fool way I acted. Now that the steam's sort of blown off, we—we understand each other."
"You're certain that wedounderstand each other?" Her gaze met his squarely. "You're not going to expect things that can't ever be?"
"No, ma'am," said Archie.
Tears suddenly came into her eyes. There was a quality in this faithful, doglike devotion that made her feel ashamed. It deserved response; it deserved something better than mere affectionate gratitude. But that was all she found herself able to give.
With a demonstrativeness rarer than he guessed, she caught his big hand in both of hers and held it for a moment to her cheek. When she let it go there was a tear on the back of it; which Archie, gazing at wonderingly, suddenly lifted to his lips.
It was in acts like this, little untaught gestures of pure reverence, that the boy belied his slang and his big ears and his general clumsiness, and harked back to the age of chivalry, when a gentleman was not ashamed to dedicate himself to the service of his lady, and be her very perfect knight....
After he had gone, Effie May wandered into Joan's room with a slight air of expectancy about her which the girl was too preoccupied to notice.
"You're lookin' sort of white about the gills, dearie," she remarked. "Does the shoulder pain you?"
"No. But something else does, and I don't know just what. Oh, Effie May, what's the matter with me, anyway?" she burst out. "Sometimes I think I'm not a human person at all, but just a big inflated Ego, floating around like an observation balloon, taking notes!"
"Well, well, is that so?" murmured her step-mother, who had her doubts as to what an Ego might be. "I expect what you need for that floaty feeling, dearie, is a good dose of calomel—" and she hurried away to prepare it.
There is a certain period of the year when all its widely scattered children home to Kentucky as surely as bluebirds home to the hollow stumps in March. It is the season of the May race meet.
All her life Joan had heard of the Kentucky Derby, and she looked forward to it with almost as much eagerness as her father. Derby Day means more to the Kentuckian than the running event that has become classic. It means the reunion in street and club and hotel-lobby of neighbors from the various towns of a State where neighborliness is cultivated to the point of a fine art; of men who have been boys together; of friends whose ways have drifted far apart (for your Kentuckian is a great wanderer), and who have years to make up over the clinking glasses. During the spring race meet, Louisville ceases to be merely Louisville, and becomes Kentucky, the great old mother-home that leaves its stamp upon its children even into the third and fourth generation.
There is a good deal of sentiment about the Derby, a good deal of tradition; and there is as well a certain spirit of carefree, sporting, joyousbonhomiewhose like is not to be found perhaps on any other race-course in the world.
Joan, who loved crowds, got much pleasure out of the streets at this time. She took appreciative note of self-conscious belles from up-State, in picture-hats and peek-a-boo blouses, with a predilection for wearing long-stemmed roses pinned to their belts. She noted the young farmers who accompanied them, big-shouldered, square-chinned, clear-eyed, crimson with the sun—a sturdy, virile type, clumsy in their country-made clothes, but with well-stuffed wallets bulging their hip pockets. There is no poverty in the farming regions of Kentucky.
She learned to recognize the professional racing people, men in loud-checked clothes talking an incomprehensible jargon; shabby touts offering confidential tips to anybody who would listen; women wearing diamonds as large as peas, overdressed, coarse-voiced, not easily distinguishable from their sisters of the underworld, except that their men accompanied them openly.
People of the larger world there were, too. The narrow streets were congested with great touring-cars bearing unfamiliar license tags; New York, Michigan, California. Once, hearing crisp Eastern voices at her elbow, Joan turned just in time to see some people she had met at Longmeadow disappearing into a hotel. For a moment her heart stood still. She thought Eduard Desmond was among them. But it proved to be another man, and Joan mingled hastily in the crowd, relieved that they had not noticed her.
In all this preparatory excitement Major Darcy was, as his wife put it, "busy as a bird dog." There were kinspeople from the Bluegrass to be welcomed, cousins from Paducah, Maysville, Fayette County. Joan, who did not altogether share her father's enthusiasm for the ties of kinship, rather admired her step-mother's skill in side-stepping the Major's abounding sense of hospitality. Effie May had taken the precaution to fill her house with paper-hangers.
"What a shame! You'll have to take your cousins and things to the hotel, Dickie, or put 'em up at the Country Club, won't you? If I'd only thought!—" she murmured innocently; but catching Jean's suspicious eye upon her, she winked.
Joan returned the wink. She remembered her mother's patience under the constant influx of Darcy relatives. She had also seen the unfortunate Misses Darcy almost turned out of doors by the daily increasing numbers of their kith and kin. The bookcase in their parlor had become, surprisingly, a bed; and Miss Euphemia, the plump, as the one best fitted by nature for this ordeal, was spending her nights on a packing-box sparsely mitigated by pillows.—Not that the Misses Darcy complained, however. They were long inured to the hospitalities of Derby week.
Effie May, indeed, was the only person of Joan's acquaintance who seemed unaffected by the general excitement over the Derby. She heard with apparent indifference that the Major had been able to secure a box directly opposite the judges' stand, and she declined to rise early enough to accompany him and Joan to Sunday morning breakfast at the Jockey Club, where enthusiasts met regularly to inspect and pass critical judgment on the offerings of the past week.
"Lord, child!" she said once in answer to Joan's surprise at this indifference. "Horses ain't no treat to me. You see, they used to be my bread and butter."
It was one of her few references to a past that rather intrigued her step-daughter.
"Were both of your husbands turfmen?" asked the girl, curiously.
Effie May gave a brief nod; and Joan did not somehow feel encouraged to further questioning.
Derby Day dawned bright and sunny.
"A fast track, Dollykins," cried the Major in great glee. "We ought to break a record to-day!"
"That means the Long colt," said Joan learnedly. "The Camden entry's apt to prove a mud-hen."
She had in the past week made an exhaustive research into the race-horse question. Breeding and pedigree, record and past performance, rolled trippingly from her tongue. Joan was what the theatrical profession call "quick study."
The Darcys had been invited to go out to the tracks in the approved fashion, on top of a tallyho coach, tooled by Johnny Carmichael—who was not quite as sober as might have been wished. But his four-in-hand seemed aware of the fact, and took no ungenerous advantage of him.
Effie May had awakened that morning with a bad headache, and proclaimed her intention of staying at home.
"What! Not see the Derby run?" cried her husband incredulously.
And when with a great shouting and tooting of horns the tallyho drew up under the porte-cochère, her determination weakened.
"Oh, do come on, Mrs. Darcy! The air will do you good, and we shan't have half as much fun without you!" cried several voices, for she was very popular with young people.
She hesitated. Joan decided the matter.
"Put on a heavy veil to shield your eyes from the glare," she suggested; and Effie May yielded. It was not often that her step-daughter asked for her society.
They became part of a procession that had been filing steadily past the Darcy house since sunrise. Every vehicle in town and the surrounding country, horse-power or motor-power, was on its way to the races. Street-cars passed in a solid line, with passengers hanging to the straps, bulging out of the windows, crowding on to the roofs. There was a steady throng of foot-passengers, all heading in the same direction, which hailed the tallyho as it passed with shouts of greeting and good luck. The tallyho responded with tooting horns and waving parasols.
It was a friendly, intimate, highly democratic gathering such as may be found only south of Mason and Dixon's line; never pushing or jostling, but good-naturedly determined to enjoy itself. At the gate humanity was packed in a dense, immovable mass as far as the eye could see, and Joan, descending from her elevation, looked at the crowd in mild alarm. But the cry arose, "Make way for the ladies!" and instantly a lane appeared as if by magic, through which she and her companions made royal progress, laughing at the personalities which greeted them as they passed.
"Nobody ever minds what happens on Derby Day!" explained Emily Carmichael.
Once in the box, the men of the party deserted in a body for the betting ring, and Effie May promptly hailed a messenger. Her interest in racing seemed to have revived.
"Let's see your tips, girls—anything good?"
She looked over their various lists in a business-like way, approving this, discarding that, displaying a knowledge that put Joan's recent learned discussions to shame.
"Will-o'-the-Wisp, Satyr out of Firefly. Umm! Ought! to be worth taking a shot at. Who's up—Casey? No. Won't do! They'll can that crooked little jock yet—" etc., etc., while her companions eyed her with respect, and the messenger consulted with her laconically as with an equal.
"You want to play 'em straight across the board, dearie;" she admonished Joan. "That's the only way to win. No piking!"
But Joan declined to play them straight across the board, or in any way at all. For one thing she had brought no purse. For another she was far too busy with the people about her.
Faces rose behind her in a packed mass to the top of the grandstand—women's faces for the most part; school-girls, nice old ladies, mothers of families (who occasionally fed their families under the casual shelter of a shawl), gum-chewing shop-girls, houris of every variety, respectable and otherwise, all chatting together with the utmost simplicity under the spell of a common interest. In the boxes, and on the clubhouse porch, were girls and women most of whom she knew, dressed as if for a garden party. Chiffons fluttered in the breeze, plumes waved, there were bared throats, and lace-covered arms, and dainty white slippers. Here and there appeared the more conventional tailored dress, looking almost conspicuous in its severity. For on Derby Day, Louisville harks back to a custom as old as itself, and frankly looks its loveliest.
Just behind Joan in the front row of the grandstand sat a respectable, gray-headed little old woman with a bonnet tied under her chin, quite alone, who looked as staid and out of place as Ellen Neal would have done in these surroundings. But she had a professional-looking pair of fieldglasses at her eyes, and Joan noticed that her lips were constantly moving and muttering. The girl turned her back on the Derby to watch this odd figure.
At first she thought the old creature was praying; but the syllables that reached her ears were not prayer.
"Come on, you Will-o'-the-Wisp! Hop it, baby! 'Ata-boy! Step, darlin', step lively! Oh, you Will-o'-the-Wisp!"
Joan saw that she was not merely watching the great race, she was riding it, with whip, and knee, and voice. And at a certain moment the girl saw that she had lost it. There was a shrug, a little despairing gesture of the glasses, and the muttering ceased.
An explanation suddenly occurred to Joan. She nudged Effie May. "Look at this funny old soul behind us! She's evidently the mother of the jockey that's riding Will-o'-the-Wisp," she whispered.
Effie May glanced briefly over her shoulder, and smiled. "Mother nothing! That's Texas Nell, who's been following the ponies since the day of Molly McCarthy. She's lost and won more money, I guess, than any woman in the business."
A little later she suggested that they all adjourn to the Club House for refreshments; but Archie Blair had come with the promise of taking Joan down to the paddock later, and she decided to stay where she was.
Archie, who seemed to know everybody, pointed out various celebrities who were present; fine old General Dutton, down from Lexington with his flock of famous though still unmarried daughters; Nick Sanders of the Pisgah neighborhood, who had just escaped conviction for manslaughter because of the unwritten law; Mrs. Kildare of Storm, a splendid-looking woman in mannish hat and driving coat, here to see one of her colts go to the post in the Derby—though of late years Storm was raising mules instead of race-horses.
"A shame, too, when it's one of the oldest stud-farms in the State," commented Archie. "Racing's on its last legs when people like the Kildares turn to breeding mules!"
But racing did not appear to be on its last legs that day. The eagerness, the wild enthusiasm, above all the joyousness of the crowd, struck an answering chord in Joan. For the first time she really understood the devotion of Kentuckians to their State and to each other. It is never their work that endears a people to each other; it is their play. In a world that takes itself overseriously, Kentucky still knows how to play.
She followed Archie presently down toward the paddock where the winner was to receive his ovation; but as they reached the foot of the staircase, suddenly there was the sharp explosion of a pistol. Instantly the crowd surged in the direction of the shot.
Archie, placing her behind him, forged his way through the struggling mass to the nearest wall, where he stood her, breathless and disheveled, but undismayed.
"Goodness! This is local color with a vengeance! What's happening? Do you suppose it's your man-eating friend from Pisgah?"
"Just an old woman shot herself, they say," volunteered a friendly voice near by, "Cleaned out, I reckon!"
One of the intuitions to which Joan was liable came to her. Glancing up at the grandstand, she saw the seat just behind hers was empty.
"Oh, Archie! It'smylittle old woman!" she cried pitifully. "Go and see, will you?—a shabby old thing with a bonnet tied under her chin."
He hesitated. "I don't like to leave you here alone. Suppose somebody should speak to you?"
"Then I shall most certainly speak back!" she said, and he reluctantly obeyed her wish. Indeed, with Archie, her wishes were apt to assume the form of commands.
The gaiety of the scene was gone for Joan. She had got her glimpse of the grim reality that lies beneath. She was to have another glimpse of it.
As she stood there, buffeted by the passing throng, she caught sight across the wide passageway of her step-mother, in conversation with somebody who for a moment she did not see. Joan started across to join her. Effie May's back was toward her, and not until Joan was within hearing distance did she notice the man to whom her step-mother was speaking. Then she stopped where she was, startled.
He was a dissipated-looking creature, hardly better in appearance than a race-horse tout, flashily dressed, wearing a large diamond in his tie—altogether one of the least desirable types of those who follow the races. But he was not only talking with evident familiarity to Mrs. Darcy, he had taken hold of her arm. It came to Joan in a flash that the man was doubtless some relative, possibly her brother. What did they know of Effie May's family?
Joan stood still and frankly listened.
"No, no, you don't put that over on me, old girl," this person was saying in a low but carrying voice. "You're not going to slip away on me againthateasy!"
Her step-mother's rejoinder did not reach Joan's ears, but she saw her glance round uneasily. Joan did not blame her for not wishing to be seen with her present companion. She quietly slipped behind the shelter of a pillar.
"Married, eh?" repeated the man's voice. "Come, that's a good one! I'm from Missouri, I am. You'll be sayin' Calloway married you next. Oho! he did, eh? A bigger fool than I took him for! If that's the case—" his voice sharpened—"you must a' come in for a pretty good thing when he croaked. You'll have to come across, old sport. No going back on a pal!"
The color suddenly went out of Joan's cheeks. She leaned against her pillar, feeling rather queer. She wished she were not there—and yet she listened.
Effie May's voice reached her, speaking quite steadily, "Not one cent, Joe! You're no pal of mine. When I left you it was for good and all, and you know why!"
"Humm! Well, we'll see what your new husband thinks about it, eh?"
"No, you don't!" It was a sort of gasp; but instantly the voice steadied again. "You'll never lay eyes on my husband, Joe. He doesn't live here. I—I just happened to come over for the races."
The man grinned. "That's easy enough! I seen you drivin' in with your swell friends, and sittin' in a box and all. Recognized you right away, too, for all that thick veil. You ain't the sort a man forgets easy, Ef," he leered. "Not when he's knowed you like I have! I'll get your name before you leave this stand, and then—Better come across, kiddo!"
"I—let me go now, Joe! I'll think it over."
The man chuckled. "Afraid somebody'll see you talking to me, eh? You can bet your sweet life you'll think it over, and damn quick, too! See?"
His grip tightened on her arm. Effie May glanced this way and that, nervously. Joan stepped out from behind her pillar. After all, the woman was her father's wife! She must be protected....
Just then she saw Archie coming, and hurried to him.
"It was an old lady with a bonnet tied under her chin," he told her soberly. "She's dead."
But Joan had no ears for the earlier tragedy.
"There's a man frightening Mrs. Darcy," she said breathlessly, "he seems to be somebody she knows. He's—threatening her! Oh, Archie, what shall we do?"
The meaning of it, the incredible sordid horror of the thing she had half learned, began to come home to her. Her father's wife!
"Threatening!" Archie's jaw set. "Here, that won't do!"
He strode forward, Joan following. They both heard the man say with leering distinctness, "It ought to be worth alittlecash to a loving husband to learn the sort of woman he's married up with, Ef, old girl!"
Then Archie's hand fell on his shoulder.
Joan never forgot the face her step-mother turned upon them—She made a desperate attempt to rally.
"Why—why, dearie! is that you? A—an old friend of mine's been giving me a tip."
"Get out," said Archie to the man. "Get out, quick!"
"Hold on there, kid—So, you been robbing the cradle this time, Ef?" He grinned at her evilly. "Wait a minute, mister, there's a few things I might be able to tell you about this party—"
"Nothing I don't know already," muttered Archie, his grip tightening. "You've got five minutes to get off the grounds before I tell the police. Blackmail's a penitentiary offense in this State."
The man hesitated, looked at Archie's grim jaw, and went....
Joan and her step-mother gazed at each other. The woman's face had a curious gray look under its perennial bloom, and she moistened her lips with a dry tongue.
"You—you heard?" she said at last.
Joan nodded. She could not speak.
It was Archie who remarked quietly: "You'll want to be going home, I guess. I'll get a taxicab."
Then sheer pity overcame the horror in the girl's mind. "Yes, Mother. Come home with me!" she murmured.
For the first and last time in her life she had called her father's wife "Mother."
"I guess you've got to have the whole story now, though it ain't a very pretty story to tell a girl," said Effie May wearily. "I don't know as your papa would much want you to hear it, Joan...."
To the girl the whole episode seemed unreal, part of that strange day, with the holiday crowds, the brief, hectic excitement of the races, followed by the pistol-shot that meant the death of a ruined old woman. She could not believe that she, Joan Darcy, convent-bred, the daughter of reserved and fastidious people, could be actually participating in this impossible melodrama.
"What my father would wish hardly matters now, I think," she said, more frigidly than she realized. "Please say what you have to say."
All the way home her step-mother had wept, steadily and hopelessly, with ugly snuffling noises that took away what dignity there might have been in her grief. Joan, always helpless in the face of uncontrolled emotion, made no effort to comfort her. Her impulse of pity had already died into disgust. She could not look at that swollen, grayish face, of whose careful complexion tears made strange havoc.
The woman sighed. "If only you weren't so young!—I suppose you think I'm a bad lot—bad as they make 'em. But I'm not. I never was. Oh, I know I've done things ladies don't do!—but then ladies ain't often asked to do 'em, dearie. You got to remember that."
Joan shrugged, and resigned herself to hear what she was to hear.
"I guess you know I wasn't born a lady, nor raised like one, though I've tried.... Well, never mind that!—Pa had a little cash-and-carry grocer store over to Indianapolis, and we lived upstairs, all of us in two rooms.... It was the dirt I couldn't stand, and the crowding. It ain'trightfor a whole lot of children to live like that, all mixed in so! The others didn't seem to mind, but I was always sort of nice in my ways. Maybe because I was born before Mom took to the coke."
"The what?"
"Coke—dope, you know. It was the only thing that seemed to keep her going, poor Mom! and I'm glad she had it."
"Was your mother an invalid?" asked Joan, a little startled by this breadth of tolerance.
"Oh, no. But kids come along once a year regular, and she wasn't ever, so to speak, well. I made up my mind when I wasn't more than ten never to get myself in the fix Ma was in!... My two older sisters felt that way, too, I guess. They always had fellows, but not the sort that'd do to marry. Men like Pa, you know. No 'count—One of the girls worked at a dressmaker's, and sewed till her eyes were red all the time, and her shoulders stooped and she coughed. The other—well, the other didn't keep straight, dearie. Awful few of the girls I knew did keep straight. But Mame went into one of those houses—you know?—and had a lot of swell clothes, and jewelry and all. I remember all us younger ones used to envy her. But she didn't last long at it, and she died—horrible."
Effie May's eyes were fixed on strange places, and the tragedy of the world was in them.
"She used to be a pretty thing, Mame; and sweet, too.... Well, it seemed to me there ought to besomethingbetter for a girl than marrying a man like Pa and slaving, or getting a good job like Jule's and slaving, or going wrong like Mame and slaving worst of all! Once when I was out delivering dresses for the dressmaker where Jule worked, I saw what I was looking for. Society women. Ladies.
"That's what I'm going to be," I says to myself, "a Society woman! (I was about twelve then.) You don't have to work, you live in a fine house and wear swell clothes, and you can keep as straight as you like.
"The others used to laugh at me, but Mom never did. She was real ambitious for her children, Mom was. 'You keep on thinkin' so and you'll get there,' she used to say. 'You're smart and pretty enough for anything!' And so I was, then!" Effie May gave a sigh.
"A fellow come along presently that looked pretty good to me. I met him over to Casey's dance-hall, I remember, and from the first it was all up with him. He was better than the fellows I'd been running with; a good dresser, always flashing his roll—you know race-horse people used to make good money before the Pari-Mutuels—And when he wanted me to come over here to Louisville with him—well, it looked to be my chance—Imagine starting out to be a lady, in company with Joe Markheim!" said Effie May grimly.
Joan exclaimed, "Not that dreadful-looking creature you were talking with to-day?"
The other nodded. "Only he wasn't dreadful-looking then. He was real handsome—or he looked that way to me. You see I was only sixteen," she sighed. "Almost anything in pants that'd take me away from home would have looked good to me then, I guess!—But I talked to Mom about it, and she thought I'd better take a chance, too. So I went."
The girl had begun to shiver a little. "You mean—you married him?"
Effie May gave her a queer look. "Well, yes. As near as I could. You see he had a wife at the time."
"He—betrayed you, then?" gasped Joan.
"Oh, no, dearie, I knew. So did Ma. But we thought I'd better take a chance.... You see, things like that depend on how you're raised. To us it was almost the same as being married. Not like poor Mame, you know. There's a whole lot of difference between a kept woman, andhersort."
"Is there?" said Joan with stiff lips.
"My, yes! Sometimes if the man sees you're straight, he marries you after a while.... But Joe didn't. I'm sure I don't know why I stuck to him as long as I did, except, that I'm sort of an affectionate disposition and don't like to change," she ruminated. "And then he began to play in pretty bad luck, too, and that's not the time to leave a man, when he's down and out. I guess I'd have been sticking yet, if he'd acted decent—I ain't going to tell you what he asked me to do once when he got on his uppers," she said, darkly flushing, "but it was something no gentleman would have proposed to a woman who'd stuck to him through thick and thin for years! That's when I left him for Calloway."
"Did—did Mr. Calloway marry you?" asked Joan faintly.
"Sure he did! Just before he died. He got religion, and the priest told him he ought, so as he could leave me his money without any fuss. He was a good old sport, that priest! And so was Calloway. Never turned a hair. 'Wish I'd done it before!' says he—Don't you think that's a pretty good recommendation for a woman, when a man's willing to marry her after living with her for fifteen years?" she asked wistfully.
"I suppose so," murmured Joan—The usual thing was happening to her. Old standards receded. Inevitably, irresistibly, she was beginning to see things through the other's eyes. This was Joan's great weakness—though there were people who considered it her strength.
"Calloway was pretty near to being a gentleman—not a born one, like your papa, dearie, but real genteel in his instincts, and he did a whole lot to make a lady of me. He always insisted on us having the best of everything, company especially. When he knew he had to die, poor boy!"—her lips trembled—"he says to me, says he, 'Here's your chance, old girl! Take the money, and go somewhere and make a fresh start,' he says. 'You'll do! You're good as any of 'em.' His very words, dearie! 'You're good as any of 'em.'"—She wiped her eyes.
"And so you came here?" prompted the girl.
"Yes. I'd always liked the place. It seemed sort of friendly and homelike, and it's small enough so that your money counts for something. It wouldn't be lost, I thought, like in New York or Chicago—But I was kind of lonesome at first—always been used to having a man around—and I didn't know anybody. And then your mama died, and I saw my way clear. You didn't know I knew your mama, did you, dearie?"
Joan was rather startled. She had not realized quite how early her life and her father's had been swept into the stream of this woman's ambition.
"Well, I did. Not to speak to, of course. But I used to watch her out of my back windows, and think what a lady she was to be so poor, and wished I knew how to scrape acquaintance with her. And once she caught me watching her, and smiled up, just as sweet, as if she'd known me always and liked me. (Sort of the wayyousmile, dearie, when you're real pleased.)—And when she died the idea came to me, all of a sudden, that I was the person to look after them she'd left."
Suddenly she buried her face in her hands and began to weep again. "Oh, Gawd! Think of where I'd got to, and look where I'm at now!"
Joan moved restlessly about the room, conscious of the ache of tears in her own throat. She pictured that child of the streets and dancehalls, poor little "Lightfoot Ef," as they called her, struggling to better her condition, sturdily trying to find some tenable place of her own in life, even as she, Joan, was trying—but under what hopeless handicaps! She thought of the cocaine-drugged mother with ambitions; of the evil, treacherous creature with whom the child had chosen to "take a chance"; and it began to seem almost a miracle that Effie May should be what she was. Joan looked at her with something like respect.
"But I heard you tell my father you had buried two husbands!" she said sharply. "If you really felt that you were 'good as any of them,' that—that you had practically been married—why didn't you make a clean breast of it all?"
"Because I'm no fool!" gulped Effie May. "There are some things a man won't stand for—though God knows whytheyshould be so all-fired particular! And it seemed the only chance I'd ever get to marry a real gentleman. Besides, there was you."
"Me?"
"Why, yes, dearie. I'd never had any children, and I always thought if I could have I'd like 'em all to be girls, that I could dress up, and do for, and bring up nice.... Oh, Gawd, Gawd!" she moaned, suddenly flinging herself across the bed, face down. "Here I am in a grand house, with a limousine, and servants of my own, and a husband like a king, and a young lady daughter in society, and me giving parties to the pick of the land!... And now to go down again, back to the gutter!" She beat the bed with her fists.
There was something appalling in the utter abandonment of this woman whom Joan had never before seen otherwise than cheerful and poised.
"If I'd never gone to the races! Oh, Gawd! If I'd never gone! I had a hunch. I knew I'd meet up with that skunk Joe again somewheres, and I'd ought to have kept out of his way! There isn't a soul in this town could 'a' told on me unless it was that boy Blair."
"Archie?" repeated Joan, surprised.
"Yes," she sobbed. "He spotted me the first time he saw me—I don't know how. But I could 'a' kepthismouth shut all right!—I was fixing him so he'd never tell...."
In her abandonment Effie May might have said rather more than she meant to say, if at that moment a great honking of horns and shouting of gay farewells had not announced the return of the tallyho from the Derby.
She sat erect with a gasp. "It'shim! For goodness' sake don't let your papa catch me like this!" She flew to her dressing-table, reaching for cold cream, powder, rouge. "Keep him off," she besought the girl. "Quick!—pull down those shades—there, that's better. Help me into a negligée—no, no, not that green one, for heaven's sake!—a pink one. Now some perfume. Tell him he must be very quiet because of my headache—don't forget, that's why we came home. There!—how do I look?"
She leaned back languidly in a chaise-longue, with a handkerchief dipped in cologne hiding her swollen eyes.
Joan, rather dazed, had assisted at these hasty rites, marveling at the triviality of a mind which could turn in one second from the catastrophe of a wrecked life to considerations of vanity. And then the sheer desperation of the thing struck her. Effie May was not done yet. She meant to go down fighting.
There was something in the girl that always responded to gallant effort.
"Good luck," she said queerly, and went to the door.
"Wait!" gasped the woman. "Joan!Are you going to tell him right away?"
"Not—right away," said the girl slowly.
There came a little rush behind her. Effie May had caught up one of her hands, and kissed it....
The girl had a difficult problem before her. She wrestled with it throughout a sleepless night. She felt like Fate, with human destinies in her control.
At one moment her course seemed clear beyond the question of a doubt. It was unthinkable that her father should continue to recognize as his wife—her mother's successor!—a woman who had led an immoral life, who had earned the very money that supported them by living for years as the mistress of another man. Joan's cheeks burned with the thought.
At the next moment, she wondered what her father would do without the woman. She had no illusions left regarding Richard Darcy. He had never in his futile life stood on his own two feet. He was one of the inefficients, who must be cared for. Now, weakened morally and physically by the habit of luxurious living, he was less able than ever to take care of himself. Age was coming upon him rapidly. In the struggle of life, he must go down utterly to defeat—Unless his daughter could help him; and so far his daughter had been unable even to help herself.
The girl wondered, too, her heart sick within her, whether he would consent to give up the luxury he loved when he learned the shame that went with it.... Not that he would be able to forgive the woman! She knew his fixed standards, his pride of race, too well to expect of him any such magnanimity. The vulgarity of Effie May had been quite enough for him to swallow, as it was.
Joan thought that if, knowing his wife's past and utterly despising her, he yet kept her because of material benefits, it would be a shame she personally could not bear. Better, perhaps, that he be not put to the test.
And yet—in her mother's place, a woman of the town! (The girl was not able to make the fine distinctions in vice suggested by her step-mother.)
There had to be considered, also, the fraudulency of continuing to inflict such a woman on society in the guise of a lady.
The word brought back a rush of pity to Joan's heart. Effie May had done her best to be a "lady," poor creature, even to the extent of vainly trying to remodel her speech and her manners on those of her new family....
Joan, very white and drawn about the lips, ordered her horse in the early morning and went for a long gallop, hoping to clear her brain. When she returned, with nothing decided, she found Archie Blair in the library waiting for her.
She had never before been so glad to see him. It came upon her, with a rush of relief, that here was somebody with whom she could discuss her problem, whose advice she could ask. Archie knew! He was not very clever, perhaps, never subtle nor quick in his mental processes; but there was something sure about him, something utterly honest and dependable.
Evidently he had given others the same impression.
"Mrs. Darcy sent for me to come out and talk things over," he said gravely. "She wanted me to speak to you. She thought maybe I could make you understand better."
"Sent foryou? Why, but you've never been one of her friends. You've never even pretended to be!"
"No," he said simply. "She isn't my sort, and she don't belong here. She's too flossy. But since she's here, I'm sorry for her—Now that you know, what are you going to do about it, Miss Darcy?"
Joan laid her problem before him with a frankness she would not have believed possible. She told him about her father. Never before, not even to Stefan Nikolai, had she disclosed Richard Darcy quite as she had come to know him latterly. It was an analysis that would have looked too brutal set down in black and white.
Archie listened thoughtfully, and with no appearance of embarrassment or consciousness that the conversation was unusual. There was something in his masculinity that never suggested sex.
"I get you," he said at last. "You can't make up your mind whether to upset the apple-cart and ease your conscience, or keep your mouth shut and let everybody live happily ever after."
Joan looked at him quickly. She had not expected quite such a lucid summing up of the situation from Archie. But he seemed unconscious of epigram.
"Did I ever tell you," he asked irrelevantly, "about an old gentleman that took our room after—well, after my mother went away—and let me go on living with him because he said I was too small to make any difference? A queer old bird he was, drinking himself to death as fast as he could, but mighty good to me. It was him—he, I mean—who taught me to read, and started me going to night school, and got me my first job. When he was about half-lit he used to talk to me as if I was just his age, about all sorts of things, life and books and folks—and one of the things he used to say kind of stuck in my head. 'When in doubt, Archibald' (he was the only person I ever knew who called me all of it!), 'when in doubt, always be a little kinder than necessary....' Pretty good dope, I think."
There was a long silence.
Then Joan said slowly: "Thank you, Archie! Yes, it is pretty good dope. And your old drunkard must have been a good deal of a man. You must tell me more about him some day."
She gave her shoulders a little shake of relief.
"Very well!—I won't upset the apple-cart. I didn't much want to, anyway!"
Archie smiled at her widely. It was a smile that said, "I knew it!" and "Good girl!" and a number of other things that made Joan blush. She had come by insensible degrees to value rather highly the good opinion of her protégé.
"But there's one thing sure," he said, sobering. "You'll be wanting to get out of the apple-cart yourself!"
That, too, Joan had faced in her long night's vigil. The question of her future was no longer hovering in space. It was here, immediate, urgent. She would have liked if possible not to spend another hour under the roof that had been supplied by the late Mr. Calloway.
They discussed the matter of her living in every aspect.
"You mean you haven't got a red cent to your name, Miss Darcy? Gee!" muttered Archie. "What was the old chap thinking of? Oil stocks! Might as well have put the money on the races." Even in his loyal mind the Major had undergone something of an eclipse.
"Better, because then we could have seen it run," sighed Joan. "However, it's gone, and now I've got to get busy!" (Archibald's language was rather contagious.)
She told him of her two alternatives. The stage he absolutely vetoed.
"It's no place for a lady," he said stubbornly, and would listen to no argument. Joan suddenly remembered that his mother had been an actress. She did not pursue the question.
"Newspaper work might do," he admitted. "A society reporter with the pull you've got ought to be worth some money."
"A society reporter!—You mean I'd have to go to my friends' houses and publish what happens there? Oh, Archie, I'm afraid I couldn't do that."
"Why not?" he said innocently. "They like it."
But Joan persisted. "I'm willing to reportanythingexcept society."
"Murders? Police courts?" he suggested grimly.
"Yes, if I must."
"Well, I guess not!" said Archie.
She laughed a little helplessly. "But, Archie, you veto everything I suggest! Really, you're not very helpful. Don't you understand that I'vegotto earn my living, right at once? I'm unskilled labor. Beggars can't be choosers. You'd suppose nothing was good enough for me!"
"And it isn't!... Gosh!" he said miserably—(she saw that his big hands were shaking)—"The idea makes me right down sick! A little delicate thing like you, out in the scramble with the rest of us—! I know what it is, you see. Bad enough for a fellow, sometimes. I know the things a working girl has to do and stand for. Honest to God, I'd rather see you married!" he groaned.
Unselfish devotion could go no farther, and Joan knew it.
She suddenly found herself on the verge of tears. She was tired out, mind, soul, and body. She would have liked to put her head down on his shoulder and simply cry till she was comforted. It was such a big, broad shoulder, so amply adapted to the bearing of burdens. She could make him happy, too, poor boy! One and all, people seemed to expect nothing of her but marriage—her father, Effie May, Stefan Nikolai, and now Archie. Perhaps they knew best. They were many and she only one. Temptation beset her—or was it inspiration? She did not know....
Meanwhile Archie was elaborating his forlorn idea. "Isn't theresomebodywho would do?" he urged. "Surely of all the fellows who've been hanging round, there ought to be one decent chap who'd give his head and ears to keep you out of this—to take you away from here himself?"
Joan made her decision.
"I think there is," she said tremulously. "Only—he won't say so."
"The big mutt!" cried Archie—and then paused. Her expression, the significance of her voice, began to penetrate his humility.
"You—you're not joshing me?" he gasped.
Joan put out quick hands as though to ward him off, suddenly afraid of the glow she had kindled in his face.
"Wait, Archie! I don't love you—you know that. Not as you love me, I mean. I don't believe I ever will love anybody that way. I—perhaps I'm not fine enough—But I do like you and trust you more than anybody else in the world. And so—if that's enough—If you want me—"
"Do I want you?" Archie gripped the edge of his chair to keep himself anchored toterra firma. "Say, Miss Darcy, I—I—"
"Don't you think," she suggested with a quivering smile, "that as we are about to become engaged, you might begin to call me 'Joan'?"
At that, with a great cry of "JOAN!" he gave up hold on the chair andterra firmatogether.
The sound of the overturned chair brought Effie May on a reconnoitering expedition to the upper landing of the stairs, which commanded an unsuspected view of the library. What she saw caused her to tiptoe away, smiling to herself a little sadly.
"Hismouth's stopped all right—" she thought (with perfect truth)—"now that it doesn't matter!"